Renin is a natural enzyme, disorders in relation to which are implicated in many cases of hypertension. It is released into the blood from the kidney, and cleaves from a blood glycoprotein a decapeptide known as angiotensin-I. Circulating angiotensin-I is cleaved in lung, kidney and other tissues to an octapeptide, angiotensin-II, which raises blood pressure both directly by causing arteriolar constriction and indirectly by stimulating release of the sodium-retaining hormone aldosterone from the adrenal gland and thus causing a rise in extracellular fluid volume. The latter effect is caused by angiotensin-II itself or a heptapeptide cleavage product angiotensin-III.
Inhibitors of renin have therefore been sought, with two ends in view, first the provision of a diagnostic agent for identification of cases of hypertension due to renin excess, and secondly the provision of an agent for control of hypertension in such cases.
The present inventors' approach has been to consider the peptide sequence characterising the natural renin substrate at its binding site, and to seek peptide analogues sufficiently similar to bind to the enzyme, in competition with the natural substrate, but sufficiently dissimilar to it to be cleaved slowly or not at all. Such analogues will block the action of the enzyme and attack the hypertension at source.
Renin is specific to a particular bond in the substrate, the N-terminal sequence of which in the horse is for example: ##STR1## as found by L. T. Skeggs et al J. Exper. Med. 106 439 (1957). Human renin substrate has a different sequence recently discovered by D. A. Tewkesbury et al Biochem. Biophys. Res. Comm. 99 1311 (1981) ##STR2## the sequence to the left of the arrow A being as in formula (IA).
Cleavage at A gives angiotensin-I; subsequent cleavage at the Phe--His bond at B gives angiotensin--II; and cleavage subsequently again at the Asp--Arg bond at C gives angiotensin-III.
Peptides similar to certain partial sequences of the substrate have been shown to act as inhibitors of renin in vitro. An example is the tetrapeptide ester (the relation to the substrate residues being indicated by numbering): ##STR3## proposed by Kokubu, Nature, 217 456 (1968) but it is inactive in vivo, because of binding to plasma proteins and rapid attack by natural peptidases.
One of the present inventors undertook some years ago a development of Kokubu's work, seeking a renin inhibitor active in vivo, in which analogues of peptides similar to Kokubu's were made but having a methylene imino group --CH.sub.2 --NH-- in place of the peptide link --CO--NH-- between the leucine residues. One of these analogues was: ##STR4## which is the tetrapeptide (I) modified at the Leu--Leu link, leucine of course being ##STR5## This analogue (III) was the first effective in-vivo inhibitor of renin and was shown to have significant antihypertensive action in Goldblatt hypertensive rats (Parry, Russell and Szelke p. 541 in "Chemistry and Biology of Peptides" Ed. Meienhofer, Ann Arbor Science Publishers 1972). Little or no attention has however been paid to the work, which the authors themselves were unable to pursue, in spite of considerable activity in the general field of substrate-based inhibitors for renin, reviewed for example by Haber & Burton, Federation Proc. 38 No. 13 2768-2773 (1979).